Have you ever heard of...

flour developing mold? Disgusted and baffled doesn't even begin to relay my reaction to finding that the container I had been holding my baking flour in since I got married had molded over in the bottom of the container. I didn't even know mold could grow in flour, like green mold. Fuzzy. Get the picture yet?


I think the culprit of this story would be the containers since they are glass, not air tight, and the lids come off frequently. Could it be where I kept it? On top of the fridge? Maybe the flour I bought was older and closer to going bad? Does flour even have an expiration date? As you can tell, I'm quite uninformed on this topic. Feel free to answer any and all of these questions.

My SIL referred me to these air tight containers in the mean time and I definitely am planning on going and buying quite a couple tomorrow. You know a separate container for my flour, wheat flour, sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, bulk brownie mix, bulk pizza dough mix, and ground coffee (for a bread recipe I often make). So for now, crisis averted. But it's funny that I thought I would be a genius i.e. know everything after I spent four plus years in college. And now that I'm almost done with that accomplishment I realize I have barely scrapped the surface. Scary thought. Especially because I like to know everything. And why yes, I would consider myself a know-it-all.

Birfday Boy

My hubs turned the big 2-6 last thursday and we had a little get together with friends to celebrate with a potluck italian dinner and some delicious birthday cake I made myself. I know, go me.

Look at that big breath he took...and yet the candles still won. I bought the fun sparkler candles that re-light when they get blown out.

Happy birthday Jared, your 26th year will be amazing I'm sure!

I like to think I drink

Sometimes, on a random whim I drag the Hubs to random stores where I can buy random ingredients to make random drinks to satiate my random cravings. No, I am not pregnant. Just wistful of my childhood memories.I made these for two awesome sets of people, our wonderful fun playmates from Draper the Shaw's, and my old roomies at our roomie party. Both occasions were lovely.

Italian Sodas: the best party drink you could ever please family, friends, or guests with.

Start with a clean empty class and then...
fill 1/3 with crushed ice

 
pour in flavor syrup of your choice until it almost reaches the top of the ice

fill 1/3 with 7up
fill remaining 1/3 with half and half

Stir lightly, finish with a dollop of whip cream (optional) and a cherry on top (optional).

Divine.

Hope everyone has an amazingly happy weekend!


-J&M

Say What? VitaminWater

Any requests, suggestions, or ideas for future Say What? posts please email them to me at melissajoymills@gmail.com

So for all you athletes or those who are doing anything you can to be healthy including changing your diet, make sure to read the fine print on all food and drink items you buy and don't just go with a companies word that it's 'healthy'.

“The way that vitaminwater is marketed and positioned it’s made to look more healthful than other sugary beverages, but it’s not – it’s still just a soft drink,” said Margo G. Wootan, Director of Nutrition Policy

source

I along with the many of people who wanted to read those spunky quotes, and look all schnazy and healthy with my bottle of VitaminWater drank it a great deal my freshman year of college. I thought it was good for me based off the sole fact that it contained a great deal of my needed daily vitamins. And of course that it contained the word Vitamin. I mean come on, anything that has 'healthy', 'vitamin', or 'diet' in it is good for you right? This was before my nutritional class, and also prior to some research into the issue.

To start with, just check out the label on any bottle of VitaminWater. On average they each contain about 33 grams of sugar and 125 calories per bottle. That may not seem a lot to you so let me put it in plain words. That's more than a 12 oz. serving of Coke (source). Now do I have your attention? In addition, the second ingrediant is Crystalline Fructose. Ever heard of it? Neither had I. After some quick research I found that it is, “produced by allowing the fructose to crystallize from a fructose-enriched corn syrup" , which essentially is High Fructose Corn Syrup. (source)

So you're not really drinking something thats good for you. In fact, the majority of it is SUGAR. And not just any kind of sugar, but the kind of sugar that is known for causing serious damage to your liver, and it can make your aging process speed up. HFCS=early wrinkles. In addition to this kind of sugar being essentially HFCS, is specifically has trace amounts of arcenic, heavy metals, and lead.

Well what about all those awesome vitamins on the label? They're still good for you aren't they? Well there are two different types of vitamins and minerals. Water soluble, and fat soluble.

Those that are fat soluble vitamins to be absorbed and used by your body have to be ingested with a meal, or else they are just passed through your system (source). Additionally the water soluble vitamins that are included in VitaminWater are most of the time not needed in the typical american's diet as they frequently already have their daily required amount from other natural sources. Vitamins such as riboflavin, thiamin, and niacin are needed in such small amounts, that they frequently have already been acquired in a day and are also just passing through unneeded.

Granted, if you are a completely fast food eating, nutritionally starving person, some of the vitamins in VitaminWater would be benenficial. But for the majority of people, they don't need to drink VitaminWater to gain those essential vitamins.

So do the benefits outweigh the risks?

Ingesting arcenic, making my kidneys work hard to filter out those unneeded vitamins plus all that extra HFCS that I really REALLY don't need on my butt and thighs makes my answer a resounding no.

And besides, VitaminWater doesn't even taste that good.

p.s. the saddest thing of all of this is the VitaminWater can keep going on marketing that its good for you even though it really isn't. Read this article on their awful marketing ploys and see if you even want to support this company.

p.p.s. what kind of surprising things have you learned about some of the products you use that you wouldn't have ever guessed were an issue?

My brain fart day this week

My sweetheart came done to p-town today to bring sweet Adi to see the vet (she licked the stitches to much to where her insicion was starting to open). In addition to being worried about that, today has been an interesting and cynical (on my part) day.


The awkward:

I discovered this morning one of my favorite perfumes smells like it's rotten. Sad.
I forgot to shave my legs this weekend. Sorry to the guy in modern dance who had to support my nasty hairy leg today.
As I was sneaking my shorts down to cover my unders while walking to my first class, I outright ripped my pocket seam...oops. So now I have a gapping hole in my pantalones.
Lipgloss exploded onto the kid next to me in my religion class as I was trying to apply it...how do you possibly clean that up with only one tissue?
Sorry to the guy who gave me car advice and then I called my dad to ask the exact same question. It's not that I don't trust your opinion...its just that a girl needs to call her dad first.

And the epitome of awkward today, I had an awful time balancing while changing for dance in the bathroom stall and therefore was banging quite a bit on the walls...and someone banged back from the other side of the stall. What do you say after that, hello or sorry?


The awesome:

On a whim I suggested we watch an episode of 24 last night since I'd heard it was good...and now we're addicted. Already six episodes down, only 196 left.
I listened to Sara Bareilles the entire drive down to school this morning. I love her. She makes me happy.
My english professor completed her email today in ergophobically yours. How freaking awesome is that? I love english professors.
I found this drink called Muscle Milk in Macey's grocery and LOVE it! Plus it gives you 25% of every vitamin or mineral for your daily need.

And finally, I got another pair of TOMS today. They are so comfy! I think they kind of look like elf shoes, but they are so stinking comfy. When will my obsession end you ask? I don't know.

Overall, a great and awful day all at the same time. I just have felt...off. Oh well.

Happy Wednesday!

-M

p.s. I LOVE it when everyone updates their blogs. 

...so update!

photo contest+fill in the blank friday

This week has been a pretty good week for photography. I took 

this photo on Tuesday at a local pasture by my mother-in-law's house,

and I'm submitting it to Through a Photographer's Eyes for the

But in addition to that I was sure you'd want to read some fun facts about me and my honey. 

Yes, I'm getting more and more sentimental as our anniversary draws near. 

Odd? No. I'm a female, cut me some slack. 

1. we love reese's peanut butter cups because its the perfect combination of peanut butter and chocolate. and we love to devour bags together. its the absolute all time proud pleaser when we do movie night.

2. a time that our mothers knew best was when we decided to go on a cruise for our honeymoon. they both knew it was a mistake because it was to expensive and not as much fun as we envisioned but they still supported us.

3. our first kiss went a little like a full symphony playing perfectly sweet music, like butterflies all around us, the rest of the world was blocked out, and completely weak at the knees. and that was just my hubby's emotions from it. (:

4. our celebrity crush is any of the james bond actors. sean connery is Jer's fav. timothy dalton is my preference. seriously, we own all 21. come on over, we'll do a marathon sometime.

5. our splurge of choice is gas money. we spend tons and tons of money driving back and forth from our parents hometown for really any excuse we can come up with. what can we say...we just really dislike utah county.

6. our biggest accomplishment is our first year of marriage! everyone was very correct, it was tough, but its going to get much better after this now that we've adjusted to living with each other.

7. our dance jam of choice is lucky by jason mraz and colbie callait. its our song, we danced to it at our wedding, we have every word memorized (and if we don't its a great chance to lighten up the mood as we dance in the kitchen).

I love my hubby. Love love love him. I can't wait til we're a couple years down the road, in our first house with a couple children and look back and see our short yet wonderful journey. 

Happy weekend!

~M

bras and mustard

but not together thank goodness. No, these are just the latest of Adi's mischievous adventures. Specifically today. After our afternoon running, playing, and jumping in the yard I came in for a delicious turkey pepperoni, bell pepper sandwhich. With of course, my all time go-to condiment: MUSTARD. Mmmm. I do love me some mustard. You can just ask my husband and prior roommates, I go through a small bottle about a month.

Normally, as in always, I hang out on our bed when I'm relaxing at home. Mainly cause we can't get any couch we buy through the front door of our new apartment. Anyways, so since Adi is still small enough to not be able to get onto the bed, I always lift her up and then get settled. But today, I forgot when I put her up that I had already put my sandwhich on the bed. Oops. Good news is Adi LOVES mustard. And pepperoni. But that's all she ate of my sandwhich. Don't worry, I made a new sandwhich.

After I took her out for the potty, she came in, and while I took my own toilet break she somehow found my bra wherever she had hid it earlier...little stinker. And then she managed to hold onto it with all her might while I chased her ALL OVER the apartment.

Boy do I love that little girl.

Happy Thursday

~M

p.s. I'm sorry I don't have a guest postee AGAIN this week. I promise, 

I'll get a good one for next week.

a day for mothers

Today we both actually had off from work so we spent most of the day at my parents and the afternoon at Mama Sherrie's. It was a glorious day of relaxation, eating tons, and playing with our baby girl! Needless to say that EVERYONE is in love with her. And when I say everyone, I mean every SINGLE person that meets her. What can I say, we have a little heart stealer. 

And now we are family of three. If you haven't met her yet, I hope you get the opportunity soon. 

She is the most perfect, sweet tempered, teasing, licking puppy. I truthfully get a mother feeling now that we have her. I am constantly worried about her when I'm not with her, we have to get up every couple hours every night to toilet her, and I feel like I have to protect her from everything. 

She even lets me craddle her like a baby. 

To that many have said that the next step is a baby. Well, not for quite a LONG while folks.

Its a new week. Happy Monday!

~M

P.S. you ready for another theme week?

P.P.S. I'm feeling a bit of 'loving yourself'. Personally I could use a bit of a pick me up.

{Cory&Lauren}

What a beautiful and perfect day it was today for my cousin's wedding. She got sealed in the SLC temple to her sweetheart Cory. It was early, and we were tired. But that didn't make it any less special and sacred. Although there were SIXTY FIVE other weddings at the SLC temple, it all went very smoothly. The garden's are of course, divine in May.

And then they came out and of course looked like they were straight out of a fairytale.

They looked so happy it was just perfect.

Completely reminded me of our wedding day almost 11 months ago.

So beautiful! Of course their luncheon was delish...

And their reception was picturesque...

But of course during the break between the luncheon and reception 

we had lots of fun playing with Adi...

 Overall, a perfectly beautiful Saturday.

How was your Saturday? Eventful?

I hope so. 

~M

Puppy love

TGIF. Seriously. Although these past two days with our brand new puppy have been perfect, I'm ready for a break from trying to juggle school, work, and a brand new pup who needs constant attention. And since I know you guys are going to get sick of hearing about my little baby Adi, I thought I'd switch it up today. See, I told you this was going to be the week of serious randoms. 

1. What I love the most about my home is...coming home to my beautiful puppy, and handsome husband. Even though I often wait up for him to get home to spend time with him at home, I still love having my little family all together.

2. I'm excited because...saturday is my cousin's wedding which we're going to and it will be a beautiful all day event. And it will be the first time our family get to meet our Adi. We can't wait!

3. My preferred method for blowing off steam when I'm frustrated is...sitting in my car outside my house before I come in, having a very intense conversation with myself on how I handled my frustrations. So if you ever see me making wild hand gestures when I'm the only one in the car...just walk away.

4. Currently I'm craving...nothing. I just satisfied my hunger with some delicious mac n cheese.

5. The thing I love the most about my mom is...she always has a solution, piece of advice, or outpouring of love to give me when I see her and talk to her on the phone.

6. If I were going to write a book the title would be...'the heart of a daydreamer'. I feel like I daydream a lot. Maybe because I get bored in class, or at work, but its the best way for me to spend time when I have nothing particularly of interest to do. Thank goodness I have friends that help keep me on track.

7. If I had one thing to eat for the rest of eternity it would be...Cafe Rio Pork Salad. Enough said. If you haven't had the opportunity to have one and you ever get the chance, try it. Seriously.

Happy Friday!

~M

{Tea Party} of a Time

Finally, finally we are back. Doesn't that make you just so happy? It does me. I seriously have missed blogging a ton. Finals+moving+cleaning for over ten hours at our old apt. plus our new one = an overwhelming couple of weeks. Anyways, we are finally unpacked and so its time to catch up!

Over a week ago my mother and I threw an extremely fun, prim, and spunky shower for my gorgeous cousin Lauren who is getting married to the man of her dreams on May 7th at the Salt Lake Temple. Being that she's the closest cousin in age to me on both sides of the family, makes me very excited for her wedding.

She wanted a 'time' coordinated shower, and seeing as it was so close to the Royal Wedding, I thought it'd be super cute to do a English tea time feel to it. And if I do say so myself, it turned out SOOO cute!

 {Pincock Cousins+Aunt Vellis}

{Lauren+Aunt Shelly}

Everyone wore their own style of hat, which was really fun.
Then we chatted, ate, and then opened some presents

And then of course we had some great games. 

The first was the classic 'how well do you know your fiance' game which I didn't get pictures of, and then I arranged a secret drop in from the fiance Cory, and some guests (Lauren's bros) to play the last game. 

Lauren was blindfolded, and then had to distinguish Cory from the others by only touching a certain part for ex. an ear, or nose. I thought legs would be much harder. And much more hilarious.

Lauren's response to all this was, "Mom, this is SOO inappropriate," which of course made it even better. By the end there was not a single lady who wasn't laughing hysterically. I laughed so hard that I was crying.

Cute couple.

Overall it was a blast to throw Lauren's shower and it made for a very fun Saturday!

Stay tuned, I will be putting up pictures of our new place and 

some very exciting developments for our family later this week.

~M

p.s. this week is kind of a miscellaneous week. Sorry for that!

apologies

I'm sorry. I'm very very sorry I left you high and dry this week blogging world. 

Finals have taken over my life. I'm sorry. 

I'm also sorry to the security guard I chewed out at the library yesterday about not letting me bring in my cherry limeade from sonic. If you're reading this security guard guy, I'm sorry. Its finals week. Tensions are high, and you really pissed me off. But I felt bad right after I walked away with my 'tude' and cherry limeade-less hands. 

Forgive me. All *$@#'s broken loose. Cause its finals week. Don't worry, I comforted myself with a 44 oz. D.P. tonight.

It will all be over tomorrow.

~Melissa

p.s. I haven't showered in over two...maybe three days. I'm not quite sure. I've lost track. How bad+gross+revolting is that? 

p.p.s. as I said. Its finals week.

p.p.p.s. tomorrow I will wow you with something beautiful. I promise.

Moldable Creativity

As part of trying to find new un-developed loves, I have undertaken trying to do that myself this week. One thing I've always been fascinated with, is cake design. Anyone addicted to Cake Boss? Point
proven.

So seeing as Sandra from work is an expert cake decorator, what would be better then getting a bit of tutorial from her? Well Sunday, Tori from ScottyandTori and I headed over to Sandra's and spent about three hours perfecting curvy lines, shell borders, roses, and more. It was actually A LOT harder then I thought it would be. Muscles in my hands that I never even knew I had hurt afterwards!

My writing could definitely use some work. In the end it was so much fun! Messy, but definitely a B L A S T. Of course everything is so much more fun when you do it with friends.

Have you decided what you want to experiment learning?

And please remember....


"The most common misconception is that we would have to leave our current lives in order to pursue our dreams. It is easier for us to use our jobs, families, financial situations, time obligations, ets., as a way (or ways) to keep us "safe" from the anxiety caused by stepping out of our comfort zones into the cerative process. When we allow ourselves to be thus thwarted, we deny ourselves tremendous joy. The most effective way to confront blocks is to form creative cluster groups in the lives we're already leading." 

-Julia Cameron

 Give yourself permission to follow your dreams+passions+creativity.

{via}

Find something new to do today.

~M

Daddy's birthday+splurge-arama

Sorry for being a day late guys. I just wanted to say, I have done my best to stop negative self-talking, which has already in a week improved my self-confidence.

Hope everyone's weekend was great! My daddy's birthday was today, but we celebrated it yesterday by going to SIZZLER!

 

{And of course we did a puzzle}

Happy birthday daddy! I love you so so much. You taught me about compassion, kindness, charity, sympathy, and saying sorry first. All that I needed to know to prepare me for marriage. I miss you so much since I've moved out of home. I miss you waking me up for school, or to go grocery shopping with you. I miss you making me grilled cheese sandwhichs, 

and I miss having you waiting up for me when I get home from a date.

I love you so so much! 

And so...here comes my big surprise... I bought this on a last minute splurge impulse...

And I'm smitten. 

{I took this with my new play toy}

I plan to take many fun+inventive photoshoots. I want to get good. I am so glad that I bought this, I've always wanted to get into photography since it's one of my undeveloped loves 

but I never wanted to spend all that money on the gear.

Good news is that I got it for a S T E A L! 

Seriously, half of what a full priced tech store wanted.

Look forward to some fun stuff. 

Any advice+suggestions+comments are W E L C O M E !

Happy new week!

~M

p.s. blog address changes tonight at midnight. 

No if's and's or buts' about it.

Tasty Tuesday

So as promised my favorite, delicious, and simple cookie recipe. If any of you have the Worldwide Ward Cookbook you know about this, but for those that don't you are missing out! This is one recipe that lets you have your cookie and eat it too, in a matter of minutes!

Ingredients:

One 16 (or 32 oz.) can of pumpkin- not the filling...its the big size
One box of spice cake
and one bag of chocolate chips

mix and spoon onto a lightly pam sprayed cookie sheet

pop in the oven at 350 degrees for 9 minutes,

let cool,


DEVOUR.

For those from Tasty Tuesday link up: hope you enjoy!!!

Fellow Co-workers

I don't know how many people can say how glad they are to work where they do. I absolutely LOVE where I work. There are so few negative things, and they only have to do with the scheduling of the aides. I have made more friends at my work then I have every made it my three years of college. Or any other job previous to this one.

Most people do not like the idea of working in close proximity with lots of people on a highly personal level, or the idea of working in the health care field. The usual responses I get when I disclose that I work as a CNA at a rehabilitation facility are, "Ew, you must deal with ....a lot of crap" no pun intended. Or, "I could NOT do your job". Or, "That must be really hard". Yes my job was hard at the beginning, but like every other job, once you learn and perfect what you need to do, it becomes that much easier.

Anyways, point is I love my job, and my co-workers and it is one of those things that brings me immense joy to be able to help others.

I actually had to work on my birthday, and my friend Sandra also had to work on her birthday, which coincidentally is the day after mine. So we had a little party at work.

Sandra, isn't she just gorgeous?

Nani, the awesome-est nurse ever!

Me, Sandra, and Tori who is leaving us...FOREVER. Booo.

Cake, Cheesecake, and excluded from the photo - Pizza. We eat things like this fairly often at work, hence why I made rule #3 of my 21~4~21 (21 goals for 21st year).

Overall, best birthday ever so far!

p.s. I forgot that sweet amazing Tori gave me this for my b-day.

Love that girl!

What do you love about your work?
 What things or experiences from your life would you never change for anything?